What's Your Favorite Book?

When I meet someone for the first time, and we engage in a conversation that lasts longer than a few minutes, I usually ask, “What sorts of books do you read?” or “What’s your favorite book?”

There is such a thrill in finding that someone shares your favorite genre. Discovering someone likes the same books as you usually turns an acquaintance into a friend instantaneously. Knowing that a person is a reader, whether or not we share an interest in books makes me downright gleeful, but, for me, nothing puts the breaks on a friendship like hearing the words, “My favorite book is the bible!”

Really?

Really?!

Have you read the Discworld novels? The Lord of the Rings? Any of the Harry Potter books? Those are also fantasy and they are much more fulfilling as literary works. No conflicting use of punctuation, and all without rules and regulations on how to run your life.

Alright, I won’t blaspheme, but let’s talk about judging one another based on their choice of reading and leave all Bronze Age texts out of it.

When he visited my home for the first time my friend Curt Coolman stood immediately at my bookshelf and concentrated on it for a few moments before saying, “You’ve got to wonder how we’ll judge people once all of our books are in digital form.”

Oh isn’t that the truth? Don’t we all judge people's book choices?

Twilight even picked a blur of dull gray to act out the protagonist!

The internet loves to rag on Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight doesn’t it? Sure, her female protagonist is a blur of dull gray—all the better to insert your teenage self into—but at least people are reading. Yeah, Bella Swan has a thing for creepy stalkers, but maybe reading Twilight will encourage people to keep reading, and Stephenie Meyer’s The Host was actually entertaining.

Many readers seem to hold onto the opinion that escape reading is for the uneducated, and I respectfully—no, not respectfully, I completely disagree, assholes. Escape reading is just as important as serious, educational reading; it provides us with an outlet to explore other places and a way to step back from the stress of our lives. Well-balanced books have the ability to entertain us while occasionally mirroring reality in a way that allows us to view our world through a different lens.

I’ve heard people talk of science fiction as though it has little practical use and thus subsides as an extraneous arm of literature. This kind of talk couldn’t be more wrong. Science fiction, as well as fantasy can be written in such a way that it sorts out motives behind historical events, or different sociological perspectives that affect our current affairs, all the while keeping our overstressed minds distracted. It doesn’t take long reading authors like Iain M. Banks or Terry Pratchett to see this.

If you don’t believe me, take it from the late Ray Bradbury; his beautiful wording arranges this idea perfectly.

“Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it’s the history of ideas, the history of civilization birthing itself. …Science fiction is central to everything we’ve ever done, and people who make fun of science-fiction writers don’t know what they’re talking about.”

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